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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25687108">The Order is Given</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/GraceEliz/pseuds/GraceEliz'>GraceEliz</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt No Comfort, I Made Myself Cry, Post-Order 66</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 06:36:03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>894</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25687108</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/GraceEliz/pseuds/GraceEliz</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Breathe in.<br/>Control the exhale.<br/>Breathe in.<br/>Control the exhale.<br/>All around her is smoke, and ashes, and fire. Coruscant is fallen, and the Jedi – oh, stars, the Jedi.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Riyo Chuchi &amp; her mother, Riyo Chuchi/CC-1010 | Fox</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>51</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Order is Given</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Blame the foxiyo discord.<br/>Come hit up my tumblr @graaaaceeliz for a link to it, if you want in! We're always up for more people.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Breathe in.</p><p>Control the exhale.</p><p>Breathe in.</p><p>Control the exhale.</p><p>All around her is smoke, and ashes, and fire. Coruscant is fallen, and the Jedi – oh, stars, the Jedi. The Temple stairway is slicked in blood and bodies – blood, why blood? Blasters and lightsabers cauterise the wound. Why is there blood?</p><p>Riyo staggers a little, clinging to the walls because there are bodies. Bodies of such small Jedi, smaller than her. Their children.</p><p>Someone has murdered their children. </p><p>Record, she thinks, half-wild on grief and horror, hurry, hurry and record this. Her holocamera trembles in her hands, but she manages to steady it well enough. “Witness this,” she says dully, “are you proud, now?”</p><p>Someone has <i>murdered</i> their <i>children.<br/></i></p><p>“I can’t keep watching this. I have to. Someone has to. Witness this,” sobs the woman, entering another hall. It feels like hours that she wanders, distraught, through the warm tones of the home of the Jedi. It looks too clean, too controlled, as if it’s merely the middle of the night and most people are sleeping. If she visits the refectory, will it be open?</p><p>When she watches the footage, she’ll realise she stands in the Council chamber, surrounded by their dead children, for almost an hour. The only sound is her sobbing breath. Coruscant burns. </p><p>Breathe in.</p><p>Control the exhale.</p><p>Something tears itself loose from her heart, shredding her voice raw as she keens, falling to her knees hard enough to leave a bruise. The strength of the Jedi has been her strength since she was a child; what is left for her? Fox is gone. Padmé – darling Padmé, where is she? Still on Coruscant?</p><p>The fingers fumbling to switch off the holocamera so she can comm her friend don’t feel like her own. They are blue, yet wooden, stiff as though she’s been out in the cold too long.</p><p>“Padmé,” croaks Riyo desperately.</p><p>“Riyo? What’s happening?”</p><p>“It’s – the Jedi are dead,” she gasps, “oh, gods and stars, Padmé, they’re dead, they’re dead.”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>Padmé is pregnant, and Riyo will die before harm comes to her friend. “Stay inside, Padmé, promise me,” she demands, orders. </p><p>“I promise,” agrees Padmé, so concerned for her, but she won’t share more details. Not now. Not when she’s barely capable or articulating even the barest bones of this – this – <i>genocide.</i> An entire people. Slaughtered. </p><p>Ahsoka.</p><p>She wants Ahsoka, her friend who laughs with her, who gets into scrapes with her. Ahsoka who is like a little sister.</p><p>Oh, stars. What is Soka is hurt too? What if she’s dead?<br/>She’ll never know.</p><p>Her whole life has been destroyed and she will never know if the people she loves are still alive.</p><p> </p><p>Her footage of the Jedi Temple, desecrated, tears like wildfire over the holonet, garnering outrage from many. Nothing of it has been edited; if it is she will know. Those grief-stricken halls will haunt her dreams for the rest of her life. If she has a rest of her life. Even now, the tang of blaster-smoke burn her throat. Pantora is subdued, quiet, even the birds in the marshes a little quieter than she ever remembers them being. Silent visions of dead children run behind her eyelids every second of the day, interrupting her sleep; she hasn’t rested since then. Five days.</p><p>Mother tried to drug her into sleep, and Riyo screamed hard enough the whole village heard it.</p><p>
  <i>Fox.<br/></i>
</p><p>What happened to him? Oh, she has a suspicion or two, but there is no proof. When Fives died, when Fox killed him, it was weird. Like he hadn’t been himself. Or more like, she snarls to the low salt water, he was being controlled.</p><p>
  <i>The Order is given.<br/></i>
</p><p>The last words her love said to her race through her mind, metallic and impersonal, none of the tenderness that had so strongly coloured their every interaction. Why had he told her? Why that quiet, defeated statement, left as a holomessage for her?</p><p>
  <i>The Order is given.<br/></i>
</p><p>Breathe in.</p><p>Control the exhale.</p><p>“Riyo? Sweetheart,” croons her mother, “come eat, my love.” Mother’s hands are coarse, dried out by the salt-water air they live in. A dark, sun-damaged blue. Like a dried berry.</p><p>Riyo shakes her head. “Can’t eat, mum.”</p><p>Mother settles beside her, dipping her feet into the water beside hers. “Why?”</p><p>She leans her head on her mother’s shoulder, missing Fox more fiercely than ever. “Because I think the Emperor did it. He killed the Jedi, Mother. He – he controlled them, the Clones, he made them do it. He killed Fives, and then he killed the Jedi.”</p><p>“That’s a powerful accusation,” murmurs Mother, tightening her arm around her skinny shoulders. The contact hurts. Why? “Come eat?”</p><p>Shaking her head, she denies the plea. “Not until I get him back. Not until I know, and everyone knows.”</p><p>They sit in silence until the sky is deep dark blue, the sea a distant glowing line.</p><p>“I miss them,” she whispers very lowly, eyes blurring, “I miss Padmé, and Ahsoka, and Fox, and I even miss Satine.” Tears clog her throat, rasping, and she is tired of it, so tired, so desperate to sleep without her ghosts haunting her dreams and desperate to talk without the slurring of tears. </p><p>“Satine died a while back,” Mother asks gently. “Oh, sweetheart. Let it out, my love.”</p><p>But she can’t. She can’t.</p>
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